Does that Cuscus like couscous?

Part of our homeschooling always involves animals. My kids have been blessed to have many animal classes and adventures. They think nothing of playing with a lemur or learning to safely handle a crocodile. There are still plenty of animals they have never seen though and one turned up at the final mixed class day of the year. When you google it you will get several types of results for this animals name. the main two are:

This

and This.

The Cuscus (the animal not the food Coussous/cuscus!) pronounced with a soft "u" was a fun new animal to learn about last week. It's a marsupial with a prehensile tail from australia and New Guinea. They are very cute indeed.

Cuscus:

Sometimes the animals that come to mixed class day are new to us, often we have met that species before but sometimes it happens to be an animal we happen to share our home with. The Degu was also a visitor to mixed class day this month, my son was even taking pictures of it. My friend said to him, why are you taking pictures of that degu, you have those at home?! LOL We should just open a zoo ourselves.

If asked "do you want this snake" below

My kids would grab some friends and say help us get this 135 pound snake home!

I do draw the line at things that eat things that are cute though!! I can't feed a snake a little mouse or rat or in the case of the above big snake rabbits or even larger mammals.

So anyway, it was the last mixed class day of the year. I really enjoy mixed class day. One a month my kids get...well...mixed classes, that mixed ages can learn from and enjoy. This works much better for us than some of the more restrictive homeschool classes. This year they had the animals class taught by the Granite State Zoo and also a monthly Mad Science class. This was the second year with Mad Science, the thing my gang likes best about Mad Science is that they do experiments in class and then get take home items to do more experiments at home.

Also on Wednesday, actually before heading to merit badge group, where we worked on computers and Mixed class day, we went to visit the puppies again. They are growing and changing so fast it's fun to watch the changes. Kiwi, the mother dog, looked less tired this week. It's got to take a lot out of her to nurse four fast growing puppies! Oreo, one of their cats, seems to always feel left out when we visit. She meows and tries to get out attention in any way. We do give her attention too but I guess she thinks she should get all the attention!

Oreo the cat batting a high chair strap in an attempt to get people to play with her:

The puppies were just starting to walk the day before we last visited:

Silly nursing pups jockeying for the best position!

All in all Wednesday was a busy but good day.